Essential Listening: Weight of the World, by Black Metal Motorcycle Club

0o0

"Let's concentrate on the note," said Spencer, once the four of them had sorted the avalanche of records Garcia had sent over. "For starters, we know that he's male."

Barton was frustrated and terrified for his son, but he had the mind of a scientist and puzzle solver. "How can you be sure?"

"Women tend to add adjectives and very specific details to their notes," Emily explained. "This has none of those."

"Males are also more direct," Spencer added. "First sentence – 'I plan to kill your son.'"

"And their notes tend to be more about themselves than the person they're writing to," Grace explained.

Prentiss nodded. "'I watched you every day.' 'I will watch you lose everything.'"

"We know he surveilled you and your son, which means he either has enough money to be away from a regular job, or he's currently unemployed."

"He's most likely a father," Emily pointed out. "He's clearly grieving."

"Probably he lost a child – likely a male child – and that loss he associates with you," said Grace.

"He's taken great measures to make sure you feel his pain," Emily continued.

"Let's start with the cases involving teenagers killed, but also anyone with a strong family presence. Just because your son is fifteen, that doesn't necessarily mean that his child is the same age," Spencer pointed out.

Barton nodded, looking a little daunted by the towering stacks of files. "Have you had a lot of cases like this, where someone taunts you with what they're gonna do?" he asked.

Briefly, Grace met both Emily and Spencer's gaze, and all three nodded slowly, predicting the next question he would ask.

"A few," Prentiss admitted.

"And how did they end?" Barton asked.

No one answered, which was answer enough. He looked wildly from one person to another, eyes eventually landing on Spencer, who swallowed.

"Please?"

He raised his eyebrows. "Um, suicide by cop seems to be an effective way from them to make their point, while ending their suffering all at once."

Barton took a deep breath, accepting this, then cast his gaze at the clock across the room. "Jeffrey is leaving school in five hours. There's no way we can get through all these patients in this time."

"We start by profiling the stacks," Grace told him, stopping the panic before it could take hold. "We know he's male, we know he's got to be around your age, since he sees you as a target and a threat. We know he had a child, likely male, and they died."

"We've narrowed it down already," Emily chimed in.

"And we still have a hundred left!" the doctor complained. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to be callous, but when you work in the ER, you don't remember names. You operate and you move on."

"Well, the sooner we get stuck in, the sooner we'll find him," Grace said.

"And what if he's not here?"

Grace bit her tongue. Telling a frightened father that he was being unhelpfully defeatist would not improve the situation.

Emily pinched the bridge of her nose. "He's right," she said, unexpectedly. "There are too many files here for us to profile in such a short period of time. Um, I can get to Hotch's and get back here in half an hour." She got to her feet, checking her watch.

"Who's that?" Barton asked.

"He's our supervisor," Spencer explained. "We weren't supposed to work today. We're having trouble getting hold of him."

"We could do with the extra pair of eyes," Grace admitted, looking at the tall stacks of medical records.

Emily nodded and took off, leaving them to their search.

"The note doesn't say that he'll kill Jeffrey today," Barton reflected. "It says, 'If not today, tomorrow or the next day.' Let's say he gets home safe. How long will you all be around to make sure he's okay?"

Spencer pursed his lips for a moment, avoiding the obvious trap of promising to make sure Jeffrey was okay. "Let's just get through today."

0o0

Emily pulled up outside Hotch's apartment building, The Langham, and hurried inside. The stairways and door frames were fancy and far more pleasant than her own block, but the few doors that were ajar as she went past opened into beige, bland, boxy rooms.

Man, this is such a divorced dad apartment block, she thought, as she made her way to the third floor.

He didn't answer on her knock, which was worrying. How deep could he be sleeping? "Hotch? It's me – Emily."

Getting no response, she called his cell phone again, half-expecting him to answer and tell her he was on his way in. Instead, she heard the phone ring inside the apartment.

She felt her heart clench. For the first time she had the distinct feeling that something must be very wrong here. Putting the phone away she tried the door handle. It was unlocked.

Cautiously, she pushed the door with her foot, already pulling out her gun. Emily wasn't sure what she expected to find, but an empty apartment full of half-unpacked boxes was not it. The Hotch's keys were on the side and his briefcase was on the couch, presumably where he had thrown them. In the wall – at head-height – was a large bullet hole. She felt her eyes widen.

Further around, Hotch's gun was lying abandoned on the dining table, his phone on the floor below it and, behind the couch: a sizeable bloodstain.

But no Hotch. No assailant. Not much evidence of a struggle save a broken glass and the slight odour of scotch.

What the hell? she thought.

Her training kicked in. She cleared the rest of the rooms of the apartment, inwardly marvelling at how Spartan the place was, in that part of her brain that wasn't freaking out.

As soon as she knew the apartment was clear, she pulled out her phone.

"Overtime shift, Penelope speaking!"

Garcia's voice sounded chirpy and over-loud, given the circumstances. Returning to the living room, Emily couldn't take her eyes off the bloodstain.

"Garcia, it's Emily. I need you to listen really carefully." Emily took a breath. "Something's happened to Hotch."

She heard her friend gasp. "What do you mean, something?"

"I don't know. I'm in his place. He's not here, but there's blood."

"Oh, my God."

"I need you to send police and FBI techs here right away. Everyone available."

"Uh, do we need an APB?" Penelope asked.

"Only on Hotch," Emily confirmed. "I checked out front. His car's still here."

"Someone took him?" Garcia asked, sounding scared.

"I don't know. There's blood, but I can't be sure whose it is," Emily told her. "Just get people here."

"Okay! Okay, I'm sending an army!" she promised.

Before she could hang up, Emily warned her, "Garcia, I'm gonna have to tell Reid and Pearce, because they're expecting me back, but you can't tell the others. They cannot be distracted."

"Okay," said Garcia, though she didn't sound totally happy about it. Keeping things from her team was definitely outside her comfort zone. "Okay."

0o0

They had sorted out anyone too young, or who had no children, but the pile that left was still pretty daunting. Doctor Barton showed her the notes he had made so far and she skim read them before nodding. He seemed to be on the right track.

Even so…

Grace touched the winding dial of her pocket watch. They needed Hotch and Emily – and badly.

As if the thought had summoned contact, Spencer's cell phone rang.

"Hey," he said, picking up. His calm tone dissolved almost immediately. "What – what are you talking about?"

Grace's eyes flicked up to his face. There were very few things that could crack Spencer's composure like that during a case, particularly in front of a fraught family member. She felt a something like a rock drop to the centre of her stomach.

Something was wrong, and that something had to do with family.

"What's going on?" Barton asked.

As one, both Grace and Spencer held up a hand to shush him.

"Is this about Jeffrey?" Barton asked, and Grace got to her feet.

"No," she said, with absolute certainty.

"No, no, it's unrelated," Spencer assured him, sounding a little breathless.

"We only have a few hours left here!" Barton reminded him.

"I'm really sorry, I have to take this phone call, okay?"

Grace met her friend's gaze and gently piloted Barton out of the room.

"What could be more important than my son right now?"

"You know as much as I do, sir," she said. "I know you're worried about Jeffrey, and I swear to you nothing is going to distract from that."

"If that phone call is about something other than this –"

Grace was already nodded. "I know. But there are other cases, many of them active, and sometimes we have to take urgent calls."

"What kind of urgent call would –"

For a moment, Grace let her fear get the better of her. Her pulse was rushing in her ears. "If you were about to go into surgery and someone called to tell you your son was hurt or needed you, would you ignore it?"

He paused for a moment, and she could tell that line of thinking was getting through.

"We don't operate in a vacuum," said Grace, with as much patience as she could gather. "Sometimes our emergencies overlap, and we have to make judgement calls. I can tell you, right now, that we will stay on this. You and Jeffrey will remain our top priority."

Even if Hotch is dead, she added mentally, finally allowing the horrible thought that had been stealing over her to percolate into her brain. It's what he'd tell us to do.

She felt oddly panicky, and desperate to find out what Emily had told Spencer that had put that wild, frightened look in his eyes.

Barton narrowed his gaze. "Would you tell me if it was about Jeffrey?"

"Absolutely. If something had happened at the school, we'd have heard."

"And that isn't what that call is?"

Grace shook her head, squashing her panic under half a decade of police training. "Absolutely not."

"How do you know?"

She gave him a mirthless smile. "Because I'm good at my job."

He narrowed his eyes. "Your colleague said you weren't supposed to work today. What case were you working on before this?"

"I can't technically tell you, because it's an active investigation," she admitted. "It's a bad one, and our involvement with it has ended."

He rocked back on his feet, blowing air out of his cheeks. "So, whatever it is, it's not good."

"No. I'd imagine not."

He nodded. Grace felt for him. This whole day must have been a whirlwind of fear and frustration, and none of this would be helping, but he was still working to keep an even keel. Sometimes having people who were used to coping with emergencies around could come in handy.

"Excuse me," said Spencer, coming into the room. "I'm so sorry about that."

He had clamped down on his micro-expressions. There wasn't a flicker of emotion there, except that the angle of his eyebrows and mouth were a little sharper than usual. A stranger wouldn't know; Grace did. It was even in the way he moved.

"I need to speak to my colleague," he said briskly. "Two minutes, tops. I promise."

Barton looked from Spencer, to Grace, and nodded again. "Fine. I'll make coffee."

Spencer waited until they could hear him in the kitchen. Grace steeled herself for the worst.

"Hotch wasn't at his apartment," he said quietly, and some of the panic he was concealing made his voice tremble. "Emily found his gun, a broken glass, his keys – and b-b-blood."

"How much blood?" she asked.

"Enough, but… not what you'd expect if –" He gulped. "No drag-marks."

They were speaking in short bursts, fear for their friend stealing their breath.

"That's good – and no body, that's… hopeful," Grace said, though she didn't feel it.

How come I didn't sense this coming? she wondered. Does that mean he'll be okay?

Bleakly, she recalled a pre-dawn phone call in a bus in another city. This isn't over, she had thought then – and had said as much to Spencer.

But speculation would get them nowhere. BAU agents accumulated enemies like Blue Peter badges.

"There was a bullet hole in the wall," he said tightly. "No blood or tissue spray around it. A .44, she thought."

"Also good. He evaded the first strike, maybe. He could have got out of there and got to a hospital. Assuming it's his blood."

"Garcia's checking now. Hospitals, I mean."

"Forensics?"

"Bureau techs are en-route." The knot between his eyebrows was in danger of becoming permanent. "I told Emily to write down everything she sees. We can profile from it once we're done here."

"Good. Then there's nothing else we can do."

"Emily said not to tell the others," Spencer told her, and she could hear the same, staccato surges of panic and control in his voice that had taken hold of her.

The world felt unsteady, like gravity had suddenly got ideas of its own and wanted to shake up the status quo.

"Good call," she said aloud. "The others need to focus on keeping Jeffrey safe, and we need to focus on finding this guy."

"Yes," said Spencer. "Then we can join Emily and find Hotch."

Grace nodded. "She'll keep us updated."

Spencer nodded too, and they shared a look that communicated how desperately helpless they felt – and how little of that they could show, just now, inside the house of a man whose child's life was being threatened by an unknown assailant.

When I find whoever did this to Hotch, there will be hell to pay. Whatever it is they've done.

"Back to it," she said briskly, and Spencer allowed himself to be herded back into the living room.

He cleared his throat, as if clearing his mind, and picked up the file he had been reading before Emily had called. Then he put it down again. He made a visible effort to refocus before picking it up once more.

This is torture, thought Grace, and went to break the news to Barton that not only would reinforcements in the form of their supervisor be unforthcoming, but also Emily would not be coming back.

That conversation went about as well as could be expected, but the doctor accepted it and moved on. Grace carried the coffee through. She needed to do something with her hands.

The three of them stared disconsolately at the huge amount of information they still needed to break down, then Spencer pulled himself together and took the lead – for which Grace was grateful. Her head felt like it was spinning apart.

"We know he's been killing Hispanic males as surrogates," he said. "Have we separated those case files yet?"

"Yeah," said Barton, sounding deeply frustrated.

"Alright, how many of the surgeries fit the criteria?"

"Um, eighty-two," Barton replied, motioning to a smaller stack at his end of the coffee table.

"Alright, now let me ask you this," Spencer went on, drawing their focus back to the minutiae of the case. "On how many of those dates did you operate on somebody else as well?"

"Seventy-five."

Grace frowned, sensing a thread was being picked. "Where are you going with this?"

He held up a finger that meant 'I'm getting there'.

"Did any of those patients die on the table?"

"Grief and loss," Grace realised. "He wants you to suffer – the way he suffered."

"Ten," said Barton. "Um, no – wait. Eleven."

"Eleven, then that's where we start," said Spencer. "This whole thing is about choice. He's forcing you to play God with your son's life because to him, the last time you had a choice, your decision devastated him."

Barton swallowed. "I'm a doctor. I save people."

"Sometimes people die," said Grace, clearing all the other stacks from the table. "Even when you do your best."

She tried not to think about Hotch, maybe bleeding out somewhere in the city. Maybe already dead. She didn't meet Spencer's eye when he glanced her way.

"It doesn't matter to him," he said, clearly struggling to push the same line of thoughts away. "All that matters to him is that you had an alternative and you didn't take it."

"Okay," said Grace, forcing herself to join them in the moment. "How many of these cases involve patients under the age of twenty?"

"Uh…" Barton scrabbled through the files, weeding out the older patients. "Six. We get a lot of shootings," he explained quickly. "Mostly gang related."

Grace raised an eyebrow. That might lead somewhere.

"Has a gang member or family member ever threatened you?" Spencer asked.

"No," Barton replied immediately, then hesitated. "Uh, at first when you lose someone it's mostly confusion and devastation. The anger comes later."

Grace nodded. "Yes, we see the same when we notify families."

"Alright, that rules that out," said Spencer. "Um, alright," he said again. "We have six dates where you operated on an Hispanic male on the same night a patient under twenty died. What we're gonna do, is we're gonna read the names and dates and you tell us anything you can remember, okay?"

"Okay."

"Alright, let's start with January twenty-second. Tyler Hayes, multiple gunshot wounds."

Doctor Barton closed his eyes, shook his head lightly.

"February thirteenth, Brian Douglas," Grace read, from the next patient file. "Hit-and-Run victim, lacerated aorta."

He thought for a moment and shook his head. "No."

"March fifteenth," Spencer continued. "Devon Marks, Heroin overdose."

Another negative.

Grace took the next file. "Angela Harris, another car accident, single vehicle, bleeding into her brain."

He shook his head, and then visibly began to panic. "This is no use!" Barton cried. "I would remember if I was threatened."

Spencer's brow furrowed. "Did any of them ask you about your family?"

"Uh…" He shook his head and glanced at the clock.

"Doctor Barton?" said Grace, recognising the beginning of a spiral when she saw one.

"We have time," Spencer assured him, with a calm in his voice that she didn't feel herself.

He looked at them, then back at the clock, and shook his head again. "Okay."

0o0

JJ walked across the school office with practiced calm. "I talked to Detective Walker," she said. "Final bell's at 3:10. He's gonna have a SWAT unit in place at exactly 3:00 to escort kids out."

Principal Findlay nodded. The day had been hard on her and her staff, but the end of the day was in sight and so far, nothing untoward had happened.

"We'll need you to gather the students at 2:45," said Derek and the small woman's dark eyes travelled to him.

"This could all be happening now," she said, eager to get her students out of school and out of danger.

"If the unsub sees us evacuate early, we feel certain he'll kill another random citizen," Rossi told her.

"And this also buys us a day to try and discover his identity," Morgan added.

JJ nodded. She understood the principal's priorities. It was hard, at times, to get people involved in their cases to appreciate the fine balance they often had to strike between different kinds of risk.

"So, we'll have school buses for evacuation," she said. "Teachers can brief parents who are here to pick up their kids."

"The key is to keep Jeffrey isolated and avoid panic with the other students," Morgan told Principal Findlay. "If we can do that, everybody gets out of here safe."

He left to make a call – probably to Reid, Grace and Emily, to check on progress.

"Have you cross-checked all the records of employees in the building against Doctor Barton?" Rossi asked.

"Garcia's on it," JJ replied.

0o0

Penelope answered on the first ring, with a gulp and an "Emily?" that made Derek smile.

"No Sorry, Baby Girl, just little old me," he said, wondering whether to tease her and say he was jealous. "You're out of luck."

There was an odd sort of silence, which was not like Garcia, then she was babbling her apologies in a taut voice. A prickle of concern ran through him, but he ignored it. They were all a little on edge, after the thing in Canada.

"Did you finish the background check on everyone in the building?" he asked.

"Yeah, uh, no red flags, no felonies, no connection to Barton," she rattled off.

"Okay, well, that's good," Derek mused. He glanced at the clock in the office of the Holy Cross High School. "Alright, listen, I gotta go. There's about to be a bell."

"Alright. Be safe," said Penelope, and Derek frowned.

No snappy retort? Brief, high-pitched phrases?

Something was up.

"Hey, everything okay?" he asked her.

"Yeah. Oh, yeah, I'm just tired."

Derek's expression cleared. "Yeah, I hear you," he said. He'd only got four hours of sleep the night before, and with nightmares about farmyard animals, that hadn't been straight through. "Let's just get this kid home safe and we can all sleep."

"Right."

0o0

She hated lying – especially to Derek.

But it's for the good of the team, she told herself. And Jeffrey Barton. And Doctor Barton.

"But not for my heart," she blurted aloud, and then looked around, glad to discover no one had come into her tech cave and overheard her.

Of course, the buzz of something-being-up was already running all through their floor and had probably spilled out to other parts of the building, so no one would find it strange to see her in distress, but she didn't want to be observed. She had too much else to worry about without worrying about calming someone else down.

The call from Derek had rattled her. The horror that Emily might have found their boss-man's body, or the hope that he'd stumbled back home after escaping a mass murderer had gripped her hard until Derek had spoken.

There was a Hotch-shaped vacuum in the world and she badly needed to refill it.

"I gotta find Hotch," she said and forced herself to calm down, sit down and fire her dialling programme back up.

"Georgetown Hospital."

"Hi. My name's Penelope Garcia. I'm from the FBI. I was calling to see if an Agent Aaron Hotchner had been admitted to the emergency room?" She waited for them to do their check, her heart falling on the negative.

She tried another hospital.

Then another.

And another.

On the twelfth call, when she had almost given up hope, she was confirming Hotch's details when the man at the other end of the line said, "Wait, did you say he was an FBI agent?"

"Yeah – what…?"

"We had another agent come in earlier. An SSA Derek Morgan. Dropped off a John Doe."

Penelope nearly had a heart attack right then and there, but it had not been that long since she had spoken to her beloved, and if something awful had happened at the school one of the others would have called in. At the very least it would have made the news.

"When was that?" she asked, forcing the nausea down.

"8.15 this morning," said her new favourite hospital receptionist. "Multiple stab wounds. I can check on his status. It'll take a minute –"

"Give me the ward number and I'll send an agent to you right now," she interrupted.

She felt like the moment she had heard 'multiple stab wounds' her brain had shut down.

"Alright, Ma'am…"

Penelope had seldom written so fast in her life. She had to go back over the ward number because the six was entirely illegible the first time around.

"Okay, thank you."

She took a gulp of air and called Emily.

"Oh my God."

"Talk to me, Garcia."

"Okay, I – I called hospitals to see if Hotch had gotten himself admitted to an emergency room."

"And?"

"He's not listed as a patient, but someone dropped a John Doe off at St Sebastian Hospital, and that someone's name was FBI Agent Derek Morgan."

"It doesn't make sense," Emily commented, and Penelope agreed.

"I know. Do you think they got their credentials mixed up?"

There was a pause at the other end of the phone and she imagined Emily shaking her head, that frown on her face. She could hear the burble of the bureau forensic techs in the background.

Then her friend broke the silence. "The Reaper! Foyet took Morgan's creds."

Penelope felt her mouth fall open.

The Boston Reaper.

Multiple stab wounds.

Oh God.

Her heart felt about ready to jump out of her mouth.

"Why would he drop him off at the ER?"

"What hospital did you say again?"

"St Sebastian Hospital. Ward 6. That means he's out of the OR, right?"

"I'll call you with an update when I get there."

"Yeah."